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The story begins a decade prior, as a mob enforcer named Lau (Andy Lau) is chosen by his boss to infiltrate the police academy. Their goal is to have him rise through the department, becoming a long-term mole who can tip them off whenever a police investigation is getting too close to their business activities.

Soon after Lau enters the Academy, he witnesses the dishonorable discharge of Chan (Tony Leung), who is expelled from the academy under dubious circumstances, despite being a model police cadet. What Lau and his bosses don't know, however, is that Chan is actually working under deep cover to inflitrate the mob in much the same way.

Over a decade later, Lau is now a mid-rank police detective who is on his way up, while Chan has been doing dirty deeds for the mob and secretly visiting attractive police therapist Li Sum Yee (Kelly Chen) to deal with the stress. He stifles both his growing attraction to Li, and his growing resentment of the department for leaving him under for so long without relief.

Meanwhile, Lau's life seems almost perfect, with his career on the rise as he moves into a new apartment with his novelist girlfriend. Perfect, except for the fact that it could all unravel at any moment if his cover gets blown, and he finds himself closely re-examining where his loyalties truly lay.

So okay, the plot feels a little familiar, especially if you've ever seen John Woo's HARD-BOILED. But INFERNAL AFFAIRS is a fairly well-written piece with two solid leads whose characters are readily sympathetic. There's a few clever twists and some competent directing, but the film just never quite finds a pulse. It tries to elevate itself above the HK action genre by choosing not to indulge in any action or excessive violence, save for a few isolated seconds of gunfire. The only problem is, the rest of the film may be good, but it's neither original or clever enough to really stick out from the crowd. And when you keep getting what looks like a buildup to a shootout every fifteen minutes, only to cut away to another scene . . . well, it does tend to give one a case of the action sequence blue-balls.

The other problem is that, with the exception of a police captain and mob boss who trade amusing verbal potshots, most of the supporting characters are either poorly-developed or poorly acted, or both. The female characters in INFERNAL AFFAIRS especially get the short shrift. Lau's ditzy novelist girlfriend is vapid and annoying, and doesn't convince me for a moment that she would be capable of writing anything more than her phone number on a napkin. Li is far more interesting and likable, but her character, or the chemistry she shares with Chang, never go anywhere. And most disappointing of all, a chance encounter between Chang and an ex girlfriend (who now has a young daughter), which could have become the film's most intriguing and dramatic subplot, becomes merely an afterthought by the closing credits. And why there's a sexy girl in a blue dress holding a gun on the DVD box remains a mystery, since I don't remember her ever actually appearing in the movie anywhere. Oh wait - Girls in sexy dresses holding guns on video box covers help move product. Mystery solved.

Far too light on action to be very exciting, and far too generic and familiar to be genuinely intriguing, INFERNAL AFFAIRS is a watchable but ultimately forgettable affair. That didn't stop it from spawning two sequels, though.

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originally posted: 01/17/05 16:07:28
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